We asked property managers what was the worst surprise they came across last year, and many of their answers surprised us.

“A call came in from security, ‘I think we have human remains on the property. We’re going to call 911.’ I hopped into my car, called senior management and headed to the building. Arriving at the property, I found a large area of the parking lot roped off with crime scene tape and a multitude of police officers surrounding a small pile of bones.

“‘We think it is not human, but bovine or porcine,’ stated one officer, ‘but since it was called in, we cannot leave the scene until homicide and the medical examiner make a determination.’ A few minutes later, a homicide detective arrived along with a forensic tech. It took literally 30 seconds for him to walk up to the pile of bones, look down, and simply state, ‘pig.’

“With that pronouncement, the police confirmed no crime occurred, took down their tape and left. Our property staff cleaned up the porcine ‘crime scene’ and we carried on. All in a day’s work for property management.”

-A CBRE Inc. property manager

“I had a emergency call from a property; basically someone’s water heater blew out on the third floor, causing flooding and damage to the heater below theirs, and the remodeled kitchen on the first-floor unit. At the same time, the main condensation line for the building clogged up, causing damage to the hallway, a unit where an owner just moved in three days prior, as well as that same unit on the first floor in their living room. This happened over a holiday weekend, and I was at the property for most of it, communicating with 10 different people. So far insurance is quoting the total damages around $20,000. That’s my worst.”

“Twice last year we observed adult males lay down in the middle of the street and act as though they were swimming, switching from backstroke to freestyle to breaststroke. These were two totally isolated incidents involving different people at different times of year doing essentially the exact same thing. That was probably the most surprising part of it.”

-A Transwestern property manager

“On the Tuesday after Labor Day, early in the morning, I was called by the porter via two-way radio. He was very excited, and since English was not his first language, all he could manage to tell me was that there was an animal in the building. When I got there to investigate, I found a 6-foot black snake all coiled around the sink faucet in the ground-floor ladies room. Luckily I was able to bribe an elevator mechanic working in the building at the time into catching it, taking it into the woods and turning it loose. We never did figure out how it got into the ladies room!”

“One of our property managers was on the roof of one of our buildings and was attacked by a seagull. Literally was bleeding!”

-A Transwestern property manager

“We had a building customer, well-dressed and with his wife/girlfriend, leave one of our retail stores, walk into a main building hallway directly in front of the main building elevators and pull his pants down to defecate in the hallway. This was at 1 p.m. on a Sunday, when the building was full of people walking around. The guy could have used the restrooms in the retailer and chose to go to this area instead. He took off and we never saw him again.”

-A Transwestern property manager

Pest Control

One of the things no property manager enjoys finding is a pest problem on the property. Recently, the Building Owners and Managers Association International (BOMA) along with Orkin LLC released findings from a 2014 survey of office, building and facility managers and their tenants. Here are some of the pertinent points:

89

-Percentage of office tenants who said they saw at least one pest in the past 12 months

50

-Percentage of those tenants who said they would notify their building manager the first time they saw a pest

83

-Percentage of the tenants who would report a pest to building management after the second time seeing it

50

-Percentage of tenants who said they would start looking for new space after multiple pest sightings

25

-Percentage of office tenants who could not recall being notified about pest control visits, or said that was rare

66

-Percentage of the tenants who said they would like to be notified in the future if pest control measures are taking place